Thursday, January 1, 2009

As has been previously discussed, we've been wanting to tear down the pony wall between the living room and the kitchen, making it more of a bar height. So, John hung up plastic yesterday so as to not get sawdust all over the place -

He also put a big fan in the wall here for ventilation - there was always a mysterious panel in the wall here, both on the inside and out - a friend told us that must be where they had their old air conditioning unit. Well, it was easy to remove and install a fan! We covered the light with plastic to keep out the dust.

Demolition was interesting. It looked like the wall was made out of a bunch of scrap materials.

In addition, it looks like the cabinets at the top of the pony wall were there before the rest of the wall - so maybe the pony wall is not original, maybe there were hanging cabinets there first (which is what we may do)?

Anyway, by the end of the day, the wall was cut down. It'll all get more officially remodelled later. This was done just to get an idea of how it would look. We love the way it opens up the space. A "before" shot"-

And "after"-

That's the vent for the stove still hanging down there. NOW, just imagine that wall in the above picture being gone - that's our final goal. It will make the living room much bigger.

We also learned a little more about the cabinets this week. It turns out that the knobs are not original - there were originally finger holes. Taking a knob off revealed a hole-

I had decided this week that we really had to try and save these cabinets, they are so period and I really do like them. But on closer inspection, the wood has cracked in many places and needs to be redone and the cabinets will have to be removed for the re-wiring that needs to be done. John is still insisting that we should just get new cabinets and I guess he's right. For all the work that would have to be done to restore these, we should just get new ones.